moment if anyone figured out they were in there. Emma wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her arms as though she was cold and huddling up on a chair, crossing her legs to stay warmer.
‘This is Trey and this is Chris.’ Leanne pointed at her friends, who took the other two chairs. ‘Fucking hell, it’s freezing in here!’
Gabriel didn’t like the way the boys were looking at Emma, as though she were somehow there for their entertainment. He hated the idea that just because she wore a short skirt and fishnets that somehow that was for anyone other than herself. It was a mindset that people who weren’t part of the alternative scene didn’t appreciate. You dress for yourself. It would never occur to Gabriel to tell Emma what to wear and yet she had the same problem with her parents that he had with his. Today, she was wearing a very short black denim miniskirt with a bustle, fishnet tights and knee-high boots. He could see what these boys were thinking. They were making assumptions about the kind of things Emma would or would not do just because she wore black leather and studs. Gabriel hated people sometimes.
Emma shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Gabriel wished he had a coat he could take off and give to her.
One of the boys pulled out a crack pipe and Gabriel clenched his teeth. Why the hell were they here? This was a little more rebellion than he liked to engage in. Gabriel had smoked weed a few times, he had even had some skunk, but this stuff? No, this was not his place at all. People often assumed Gabriel was on something because he was so slim and he had long hair, and because he sometimes wore make-up; it was just the way people operated. They made assumptions. But this really wasn’t Gabriel’s idea of fun.
Emma looked up at Gabriel with an apologetic face. She knew how much he hated these kinds of people.
The Laners grunted and looked Gabriel up and down.
‘Want some?’ One of them held the black, stained pipe out towards Gabriel.
‘No thanks,’ he replied.
‘Are you going to be a problem?’ the other man said. Gabriel looked at him more closely; the name Trey was tattooed on his neck. Gabriel shook his head slightly and watched as Trey twirled the glass pipe in between his fingers, a smile on his face.
‘It’s fucking Baltic in here,’ the one who Gabriel now supposed must be Chris said, rubbing his hands together.
Trey dropped a few rocks of crack into the pipe and sucked in a couple of deep breaths as though he were about to dive into the sea before putting his lips to the edge of the pipe. He held the lighter under the glass bowl and gently rolled the glass stem in his fingers as he slowly drew the milky smoke into his lungs. His expression changed and he sat back in his chair. Chris took the pipe from him. Gabriel noticed that Leanne was watching Emma the whole time, obviously trying to gauge her reaction to this, to see if she was open to it. He saw her shiver again.
‘We should go. It’s freezing in here,’ Gabriel said, stepping closer to his girlfriend. The sun was going down and he didn’t fancy crossing the tracks in the dark, plus he really didn’t want to be here with these people any longer.
‘Killjoy.’ Leanne grinned, her face like a viper.
‘It’s OK. We’ll go in a bit.’ Emma smiled at Gabriel. He noticed how people were different with each other; Emma behaved differently when they were alone, she behaved differently with her family too and she was definitely behaving differently here with Leanne. This behaviour didn’t feel like her, it was a side he hadn’t seen before. A tapping sound echoed against the window as the rain began.
‘It’s starting to chuck it down,’ Gabriel said, looking at Emma hopefully, trying to impart to her his strong desire to leave. She just shifted her gaze away.
‘Why don’t you see if you can warm it up in here?’ Leanne asked him, it was a challenge, a threat maybe; there was something about her that made Gabriel really uneasy and it seemed amplified in here.
Gabriel went to the corner and grabbed the metal waste paper bin that had been left in the signal box. He didn’t want to cause a fuss; maybe his argument with his father earlier had made him extra defensive, maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. He collected some of the rubbish from the floor and piled it in before picking up one of Trey’s lighters from the table and snapping the head off.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Trey said.
Gabriel tipped the fluid from the lighter into the bin and then picked another lighter from the table. He found himself trying to prove something to Leanne; she had a way about her that made him feel impotent, it explained why Emma was the way she was around her.
‘Don’t break them all!’ Chris said, holding the crack pipe in his hands, menace in his voice.
Gabriel lit the edge of a piece of card and threw it into the bin. It ignited immediately. He concentrated on the flames, hoping this part of the evening would be over soon enough. He felt strangely vulnerable. Something terrible was going to happen.
DS Adrian Miles held his hand out to his partner DS Imogen Grey to help her over the railway sleeper, his other hand lighting up the wet ground with the torch app on his mobile phone. Imogen tutted and stepped over the sleeper without assistance, trudging off ahead. They walked along the side of the tracks until they got to the burnt-out signal box which was illuminated by the lights on the fire truck. There was no more smoke now; it was a dripping carcass of a building.
‘You look nice, Grey,’ Adrian said as his torch beam hit Imogen’s face. He instinctively stepped out of her reach as he complimented her. She had her hair up and lipstick on; tonight must have been a special occasion. He by contrast had been lying on his sofa watching old episodes of Star Trek when they got the call.
‘I was out to dinner.’
‘Wow, that sounds so grown-up.’
‘Shut up, Miley.’
The fact was, it was good to see Imogen like this. Her mother had not long woken from a coma and, within a few weeks, had left to go on a ‘restful’ holiday, leaving Imogen with only guilt that she hadn’t protected her, that the attack on her towards the end of their last police case was somehow Imogen’s fault. She was often distracted by it at work, but Adrian knew better than to mention it, he had to trust that she would know she could confide in him if she needed to.
‘Is Dean all right? Behaving himself?’ Adrian asked, checking there were no uniformed officers listening in. Despite all of Adrian’s predictions to the contrary, Imogen and Dean were still together. Even with Dean’s sketchy history, something he’d apparently assured Imogen was in the past, they had managed to make it work. It wasn’t illegal to date an ex-con but it certainly wasn’t looked on favourably. At some point, they would have to declare it, which would mean even more scrutiny from the higher-ups, something Adrian could do without.
‘He’s good.’ She looked down and smiled. ‘It’s his birthday, so we went out for a curry.’
‘Wise not to subject him to too much of your cooking if you want to keep him around.’
‘It’s not my fault that mushroom risotto got burned,’ she protested.
‘I
